A Rug Story

Like most people, we like to surround ourselfs with nicely crafted, good quality things in our everyday life and we try to make home a comfortable and heartwarming place that feels welcoming. But we are just as passionate about recycling as we are about design. Vintage and antiques offers the best of both and along the way, we have fallen in love with the traditional, handmade Swedish rag rug – a genious art of recycling!

That’s a love we want to share with the rest of the world! Thus two friends, Kajsa and Mattias, joined forces and founded Rugs of Sweden. From the heart of Småland, in the region known as the Furniture District, we aim to bring history into modern homes. Rags are beautiful things when they come as rugs!

We are constantly on the search for vintage rugs, selecting them with care from private homes throughout Sweden. When we are lucky to receive rugs from grandchildren and great grandchildren of the weaveress that actually crafted the rug, it feels extra special. We are also happy that we can offer some newly made rugs, crafted by skillful, local weavers in our neighbourhood – made the same way that rag rugs have been made for more than 200 years. Imagine that!

The rugs are examined, washed, photographed and documented before put out for sale. If you have any questions or would like us to search for specific rugs, don’t hesitate to contact us!

Kajsa Holst & Mattias Söderberg

Rugs of Sweden

COMMON WEAVING TECHNIQUES

expressions often used when describing the rugs in the web shop

Tuskaft / Plain weave

Plain weave (also called tabby weave, linen weave or taffeta weave) is the most common and basic of three fundamental types of textile weaves – the other two being satin weave and twill. It is strong and hard-wearing, used for both fashion as well as furnishing fabrics.

In plain weave, the warp and weft are aligned so they form a simple criss-cross pattern. Each weft pick interlaces over and under each warp end.

This technique is often used in the classic Swedish rag rugs, as it is easy to set up, strong and works well when using rags for filling in order to make the simple straight stripes often associated with the traditional rag rug.

Rosengång / Rosepath

A rag rug is not necessarily just a plain rug with simple, straight stripes.

Rosepath is the name of a technique that was very popular in the 1950’s, when many rag rugs were woven entirely in rosepath. But rosepath occured already in the early 1900’s, when it was used in borders to decorate rugs otherwise woven with the simpler plain weave.

Rosepath can be explained as follows: ”Woven with or without a tabby ground, on three or four shafts, the pattern produces small diamonds or rose shaped patterns”.

Kypert / Twill

Some rag rugs are woven in twill. Siv Anderssons rugs (se ”Sivs new woven rugs” in the web shop) are nice examples of this. The warp forms adiagonal pattern when weaving in twill. Woven in this maner, the rug becomes much thicker and thus more firm than if woven in plain weave, the more common technique.

PRODUCTION

Hand weaving Rag rugs on traditional floor looms

Above: Weaving looms/floor looms at Gunilla Ernfjälls lovely “vävstuga” (weaving house) in Ernatorp, Berg. In these looms many rag rugs have been and are still being woven.

Above: a warping mill – the instrument on which you wind the warp (the lengthwise thread in the weave) before dressing the loom itself. Preparing the warp, loom and cloth for weaving for example rag rugs is quite a complicated process that takes a lot of time. The weaving itself comes last and is maybe the easiest (?) and most enjoyable part of the process.

Above: Cloth (here: old/worn out bed clothes) ready to be cut in strips and rolled into rag balls. The rag balls are often kept color wise – reds, blues, greens and yellows in baskets, boxes or drawers. A beautiful sight!

Above left: Eva weaving the rug “Ekenäs” on a very old loom (125 years old).

Above right: threading the rags as filling in the warp to produce a rug.

Above: the final product: a Swedish rag rug, handwoven in a floor loom.

CHANGING A RUG

Long rugs can be divided into two or more shorter rugs

If you fall love with one of our very long rugs and find that it is too long for your home, you can consider the possibilty of dividing the rug into two or maybe more smaller rugs. This is easily done. A trasmatta of 4 meters can for example be divided into 2 x 180 cm (with warp left over to make the tassels). If you would like to buy and divide one of the rugs on our site, you can either do it yourself or we can also do it for you (this costs 200 kr extra pr. extra/new rug – so if one rug is to be divided into two, this will cost 200 kr, if it is to be divided into three, this will cost 400 kr, etc).

Sewing two rugs together to create a broader rug

Traditionally rag rugs were made fairly narrow. They would simply be laid out close or even overlaping each other. If you would like a bigger rug, try making an oversized patchwork by sewing two or more rugs together. The rugs don’t have to be a perfect match – actually the opposite makes for a mor charmig mischmasch look that’s quite trendy.

(New) Fringes

The short ends of the rug wears out first and especially the fringes. After 20-30 years the fringes will typically turn shorter and thinner and if the rug is used very much, the tassels can finally become so short or they can even break, and will have to be repaired. Then you can either choose to shorten you rug a bit (about 8-10 cms in each end) and tie new tassels or you can cover the end with a narrow cloth border, stitched on by hand.

How to makes new fringes: soon we will have pictures/a short film that shows you how to shorten your rug and/or tie new fringes.

Do all Swedish rag rugs have fringes?

Visible fringes on trasmattor were not common before the 1930’s. Until then you would most often sew a suitable, often dark cloth border on to each end of the rug. Or weave a solid end of warp, fold it backwards and stitch it down to make a neat and nice ending to the rug.

Therefore many older rugs (as you can see them on this site) will not have fringes but ends bordered with cloth.

HOW TO CLEAN SWEDISH RAG RUGS

Beat them!

You should regularly hang out your rugs on a clothesline and give them a proper beating. This will freshen up your rugs. Leave them hanging for some time – airing is very good for the rug.

Should you spill something on your rag rug, the best thing is to just scrub the stain itself. Use a clean cloth and ordinary dishwashing detergent and then hang the rug to dry. If your rug seems dusty, just take it outside and give it a good shake.

Cleaning

The short version: most moderate sized rugs can be washed in a washing machine – 30 degrees + short program. A vintage rug has already been washed several times. The texture is softened and excess dye has already bled out. Please remember, that even though machine washing is a quick fix, it wears harder on your rug than other, more gentle cleaning methods.

No tumbling! It’s not good for the rag rug, and certainly not good for your dryer! Hang the rug to air dry with the stripes going vertically (not as on picture above).

Some rugs are better off hand washed or dry-cleaned. They can be so stiff and compact that it’s impossible to fit them into the machine, unless you have access to a really large machine. A vintage rug that has some very bright colours in the design, can also be tricky, as the dye in older materials might bleed more easily. Consult your dry-cleaner in this matter, if in doubt about the best choice.

New woven rugs in our shop from Siv Andersson and Maj-Britt Oscarsson can all be machine washed in 30 degrees.

Handwashing

The oldfashioned way of washing rag rugs, is to lay them out flat on a wooden decking and then scrub them with a scrubbing brush, using green soap. This was usually done by a lake or a stream, so that the rug could be rinsed in the water, right after the thorough scrubbing. Some still believe that this treatment is what gives the rugs both the right feel and the right scent.

It’s still quite common to scrub the rag rugs with green soap. If you have a wooden decking, the rug can be laid out flat to be scrubbed and thereafter rinsed out with the help of the garden hose.

Lay your rugs out in fresh snow and frost!

Another quick fix is to take advantage of what the nature offers. This is an old trick, still used in the Swedish countryside. If the ground is covered with fresh snow, lay the rugs flat on the snow. Whip and beat them. Turn over, whip and beat again. If freezing cold, let the rug hang overnight outdoors.

This will freshen up the rug. It’s also said, that the snow or frost will brighten up the colours again. They smell nice from the fresh air too.